Bernama:
The issue involving excellent students who failed to secure places in public universities each year must be resolved in an effective manner to prevent recurrence.Is financial assistance to study at IPTS for those excellent students not offered a place at IPTA a solution?!
National Professors' Council education and human capital development cluster chief Professor Datuk Dr Zakaria Kasa said this was vital if Malaysia was serious in achieving the vision of becoming international higher education excellence centre by the year 2020.
"How can we take more international students when our excellent ones can't even secure places in local universities?" he said when contacted by Bernama here today. [...]
In this context, Zakaria said the government should consider using a certain mechanism in providing sufficient places, including by giving financial aid to the students to pursue their studies in private institutions of higher learning (IPTS).
"We have to understand that besides being well-established institutions, the other reason for these students wanting to enter public universities is because it is less costly than IPTS, but it is impossible to take them all.
"Hence, we hope the government or any relevant quarters will give them some financial assistance. Make optimal use of the IPTS. We have 20 public universities in the country, but the number of the private ones is much more than that.